This realisation can have extraordinary consequences. Not
only do people describe lucidity as like ‘waking up in the
dream’ or ‘becoming conscious while dreaming’, but many
claim that once lucid they can fly or float, take charge of the
course of their dream, or change the objects and scenery at
will. ‘The subject of a lucid dream is not a passive victim lost
in a sequence of bizarre episodes but rather is a full-blown
agent, capable of selecting from a variety of possible actions’
(Metzinger, 2009, p. 143). As Hobson puts it, ‘part of my brain-
mind wakes up and [. . .] then I can have a lot of fun. I can
watch the dreams [. . .], I can influence the dream content’
(Hobson, 2002, p. 142).
The shift from ordinary to lucid dreaming has been character-
ised in many ways. For Hobson, Voss, and colleagues, there is
a difference between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ consciousness.
Primary consciousness is what we have in normal dreams. It
is governed by what is immediately present; all we can do is
cope with the immediate and constantly changing scenery,
rather than influencing the ongoing experience. When we
wake up, we enter higher-order consciousness, in which we
can plan ahead, reflect on the past, and contemplate the
future. When we ‘wake up’ into a lucid dream, they say, ‘part
of the brain operates in the primary mode while another has
access to secondary consciousness’ (Voss et al., 2013, p. 9). But
what does it mean for one part of a brain (or brain–mind) to operate in a different
mode from another, and to have access to one kind of consciousness or not?
Another way of describing this shift is to say that in ordinary dreams we have ‘phe-
nomenal awareness’ (of objects and events) and ‘self-awareness’, but that only in
lucid dreams do we also have ‘meta-awareness’ (awareness of one’s own mental
activity) (Cicogna and Bosinelli, 2001). Lucid dreams may feel like they involve this
sort of change, but do these distinctions really work? It is all too easy to create
hierarchies of states and levels of consciousness, but they rarely stand up to care-
ful scrutiny. Retro-selection theory requires no such distinctions. It simply implies
that in a lucid dream, instead of waking up and only then constructing a story out
of the remaining threads of memory, the selecting and story-constructing is done
during the dream.
Note that although it feels as though the increased consciousness causes the
ability to control the dream, this conclusion is not warranted by the correla-
tion. All we know is that in lucid dreams critical thinking, dream control, flying,
and the sense of being more awake, or more conscious, or more ‘myself ’, all
occur together. We also know that in lucid dreams people report more insight,
logical thought, control over thoughts and actions, and positive emotion than
in non-lucid dreams (Voss et al., 2013). But there doesn’t seem to be a strong
correlation between ‘thought’ and ‘insight’ – that is, knowing you are dream-
ing isn’t necessarily related to thinking logically about it or finding it more
realistic.
The term ‘lucid dream’ was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden
in 1913, and although the name does not describe this kind of dream at all well
‘Lucidity involves the
cognitive realization
that you are currently
dreaming [. . .], not
necessarily experiencing
your dreams as unreal
or as a merely virtual
reality’(Voss et al., 2013, p. 19)FIGURE 15.5 • David Howard suffered from
narcolepsy, a sleep disorder
characterised by periods of
sleepiness or sudden sleep during
the day, as well as abnormalities
of dreaming sleep and
hallucinations. During narcoleptic
episodes he claimed to have
been frequently abducted by
aliens, operated on by them, and
taken to their ships and planets.
His paintings show the rich
details of his memory for these
experiences.